In fact, Padel, also known as cage tennis, is a variation of tennis, played within four glass walls with a smaller court size. The biggest difference from traditional tennis is that the ball can bounce off the wall and hit the ground once before the player returns it. Padel does not require too much technique and physical strength, so it is suitable for all ages and genders.
As for Ronaldo personally, the striker who currently plays for Al Nassr Club in the Saudi Arabian National Championship (Saudi Pro League) has increasingly shown his passion for Padel. It is not redundant to mention that Ronaldo is also rushing to complete a sports project called “Ciudad del Padel” (padel city), currently being implemented in the Oeiras area. “Ciudad del Padel” is expected to start operating from May 2025 and will cost 5 million euros. This is a project jointly developed by the Portuguese Padel Federation (FPP), the Lusofinanca group of billionaire Filipe de Botton and a company owned by Ronaldo. “Padel City” is built on a 15,000 square meter plot of land, including 17 stadiums, a functional building and a parking lot.
Not only that, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner also actively promotes Premier Padel, the official professional padel tournament currently held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. According to research, Cristiano Ronaldo decided to live stream the Premier Padel final on his official YouTube channel. Since opening his YouTube channel, Ronaldo has quickly had one of the highest number of subscribers in the history of this online video sharing platform.
The growth rate of Ronaldo’s YouTube channel subscriptions leaves behind many famous entertainment stars such as Taylor Swift (60 million subscribers), or Eminem (61.9 million subscribers). After only 90 minutes of opening the channel, Ronaldo had 1 million subscribers, after 1 day this number increased to 18 million, and after 1 month it was nearly 63 million. Ronaldo’s participation in YouTube promises to help this service become the channel with the most video viewing time from users in the world, surpassing Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The broadcast of Premier Padel on the YouTube platform promises to help millions of fans discover this popular sport. Through this, Cristiano Ronaldo is contributing to inspiring young people to play Padel. Notably, Lionel Messi has also found a new passion for padel, a sport that is increasingly popular and has attracted many stars in the football world. Messi and his Inter Miami teammate Luis Suarez once participated in a padel match with journalist Inaki Abadie, and Suarez bet on who would win a free vacation for their family. The match was exciting and competitive, with Suarez feigning injury to add to the excitement of the match. And interestingly, Messi won.
According to some sources, Messi is planning to build a large-scale padel court in Miami. This promises to be an interesting competition with Ronaldo in the Padel field.
